Starlink Software Failure Causes Global Outage
Thousands without internet for hours.
WASHINGTON, July 28, 2025 – A recent global Starlink outage left users from North America to war-torn Ukraine without internet for hours, cutting off vital connectivity.
The outage began around 3 p.m. EDT on Thursday, according to Downdetector, which received more than 61,000 user reports. At 4:05 p.m, Starlink confirmed the crash on X.
“Starlink is currently in a network outage and we are actively implementing a solution,” the post said. “We appreciate your patience, we'll share an update once this issue is resolved.”
The outage came amid rising criticism of Starlink’s suitability for the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program, with many urging the Commerce Department to reconsider the network due to alleged vulnerabilities.
The low-Earth orbit satellite network, founded by Elon Musk, serves more than 6 million users globally, with recent growth in Canada and ongoing critical use by the Ukrainian military.
Ukrainian military officials were among the first to report the failure.
“Starlink is down across the entire front,” Robert Brovdi, Ukraine’s Commander of drone forces, wrote on Telegram at 10:41 p.m. on Thursday.
Though service in Ukraine was restored by 1:05 a.m. Friday, Brovdi emphasized the serious risks the outage posed to the country’s defenses.
“Combat missions were performed without a (video) feed, battlefield reconnaissance was done with strike (drones),” he stated.
Speaking anonymously to Reuters, another Ukrainian drone commander said that several combat operations had to be postponed due to the blackout.
Reuters also reported that many Ukrainian officials are increasingly concerned about the military’s reliance on Starlink and cloud-based systems.
“If connection to the internet is lost ... the ability to conduct combat operations is practically gone,” said Oleksandr Dmitriev, founder of OCHI, a non-profit Ukrainian digital system that centralizes feeds from drone crews across the frontline of the Russia-Ukraine War.
By 8:18 p.m, Starlink announced the issue had been resolved – nearly four hours after its initial post.
“The network issue has been resolved, and Starlink service has been restored,” Starlink stated. “We understand how important connectivity is and apologize for the disruption.”
Musk also apologized on his X account, stating, “Sorry for the outage. SpaceX will remedy the root cause to ensure it doesn’t happen again.”
The exact cause of the issue has yet to be confirmed, but Starlink Vice President of Engineering Michael Nicolls offered a preliminary explanation.
“Starlink has now mostly recovered from the network outage, which lasted approximately 2.5 hours,” he said at 6:23 p.m. “The outage was due to failure of key internal software services that operate the core network. We apologize for the temporary disruption in our service; we are deeply committed to providing a highly reliable network, and will fully root cause this issue and ensure it does not occur again.”
Others speculated the outage was caused by a system upgrade.
“I'm betting the Starlink outage was a systemwide upgrade,” wrote Steve Goldsby, President and CEO of Integrated Computer Solutions, Inc.
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